


One Short Sleep Past

by Nokomis



Series: holy sonnets [2]
Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Post-Season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 11:15:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4433381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Dear Mr. Chandler,” Dorian says, still playing the host, as if Ethan hasn’t seen both of them at their most raw, as if this situation were something that could be glossed over with courtesy. “It isn’t really any of your concern.  Lily is of her own mind.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Short Sleep Past

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely Rainpuddle13. <3 Title from Donne's Holy Sonnet 10. I've just made this a series since I have a lot of feelings about the unresolved storylines of season two. This can be read without having read And Would Be Lov'd Fain.

Ethan doesn’t knock when he arrives at Dorian’s townhouse. He’s not in a civil mood. The door is unsurprisingly unlocked; Dorian courts danger. 

Victor’s words echo through his head, and Ethan’s fists tighten, the dull pain from where Victor’s tooth cut into one knuckle reassuring him that he didn’t imagine the entire encounter, unbelievable as it was. 

_Brona lives, albeit changed._

It had only been Vanessa’s intervention that had spared the doctor’s life; the gentle touch of her hand on his shoulder, then drifting up to cup his cheek, had abruptly brought Ethan back to himself, separate from the rage that had overtaken him when he realized… when he realized…

So many betrayals, great and small. Coming back to Brona’s still-warm, too-still body. Victor _dealing_ with the corpse. So many days at Greenwich Place while Victor held the knowledge of Brona’s resurrection secret.

Ethan doesn’t know what he would have done with the knowledge, beforehand. Before he lost himself to Vanessa and her war, when the combined grief and sorrow and guilt from the aftermath at the Mariner’s Inn had waged war within him. He thinks that Vanessa’s gentle touch and scolding words wouldn’t have saved the doctor’s life; he thinks nothing would have.

There is music coming from the ballroom. Ethan wants to laugh; it’s Wagner.

They don’t immediately notice him. Dorian’s back is to the entranceway, while he can see Brona in profile, as Dorian lifts a strawberry up to her lips.

It is undeniably, unbelievably Brona. Her hair has changed and she’s as ivory-pale as her gown, but it’s _her_. Ethan spent enough mornings memorizing her profile. There’s absolutely no doubt.

He must make some sound -- a growl, perhaps, from deep in his throat would explain the sudden lump he feels there -- because they turn as one to see him standing there, knuckles bloody and eyes wild.

“Mr. Chandler!” Dorian exclaims. “What a surprise!”

Brona says nothing. Just seeing her standing there makes Ethan want to believe in miracles.

“I didn’t want to believe it,” Ethan says after a long moment of just drinking in the sight of Brona alive and breathing and staring at him in shock.

“Believe what? Are you quite alright, Mr. Chandler?” Dorian inquires, moving towards Ethan. Brona takes his arm, and Ethan starts to realize that she isn’t necessarily pleased to see him.

“No,” Ethan says honestly. “I spoke with Dr. Frankenstein. I had… I had no idea what had been done.”

She shakes her head, leans in close and whispers something to Dorian. 

“Right,” Dorian says. “I must ask you to leave, Mr. Chandler. The day has overtaxed---”

“Fuck overtaxed,” Ethan snaps. “Brona, talk to me. You can’t-- You can’t be what the doctor says you are.”

“What she _is_ is my guest,” Dorian interrupts, as if he were shielding her from Ethan. As if Ethan were a danger to her. “We shall have to continue our visit at a later time.”

Brona nods, her eyes dark. Ethan can’t tell if she’s relieved or disappointed; she is a stranger to him.

“You’re taking his side on this?” Ethan asks her, because this is -- was-- his Brona, and she’s got Dorian draped on her arm like he’s her puppet, and Ethan has had enough experience to know how badly that can go.

"It's more I'm on hers, truly," Dorian says, smiling beatifically at Brona. 

"This isn't you," Ethan says, because he's still trying to wrap his head around the fact that Brona is here, alive, wearing finery and swanning about Dorian Gray's ballroom as if she hadn't _died_ back in their shabby, homey room at the Mariner's Inn. She can’t want him gone. 

"What would you know of who I am?" Brona says, finally speaking, and her voice is different, her accent matching Dorian's, and he misses her brogue, misses the spark in her eyes. Misses her almost as fiercely as he had after her death, like he’s watching her slip away all over again.

Ethan takes another step closer, and-- there. Her facade slips slightly, and he sees her flinch. “You remember me. You remember what we had together.” 

“A whore and her client,” Brona says, voice filled with derision. She’s playacting, Ethan is sure of it. 

“I don’t know if you recall, what with your sudden transformation into an Englishwoman, but I have some experience with the stage,” Ethan says coldly. “And I know a fucking diversion when I hear one. You know better than that, Brona.”

“I believe the lady prefers to be called Lily,” interrupts Dorian smoothly. “A lovely name.”

“The good doctor said you were…” Ethan waves his hand vaguely in the air. “Immortal?”

“Hardly good, that one,” Brona says, and Dorian laughs merrily, tucking his arm around her waist. Ethan feels a dark, primal urge to rip into that arm with his fangs, and suppresses it as best he can. The moon is days off from being full; there will be no massacre here.

“You died,” Ethan tries again, “and here you stand. So what he says is true.”

There’s no need to bring up Victor’s split lip and blackened eyes; Ethan’s temper hasn’t been exactly even since his return from America, and the news that Victor had reluctantly shared about Brona’s fate hadn’t endeared Ethan to him.

“Dear Mr. Chandler,” Dorian says, still playing the host, as if Ethan hasn’t seen both of them at their most raw, as if this situation were something that could be glossed over with courtesy. “It isn’t really any of your concern. Lily is of her own mind.”

“Brona can speak her own, if you don’t mind, Mr. Gray,” Ethan says, eyes never leaving Brona. The blonde hair suits her new paleness, and her pale dress only emphasizes it. “You want to destroy humanity? You want to bloody your hands out of… what? Boredom? Ennui? Revenge?”

She’s angry, and hiding it. His Brona would have ranted and raved and beat her fists bloody, had she held such rage, but this new creature… She stands tall and poised wearing her hatred like a diamond choker.

“You know nothing of it, Mr. Chandler.” The name is stiff and strange from her lips; Brona called him Ethan, and it was a relief not to have to answer to a lie. Now, it’s almost a relief to not hear his true name from her.

“Don’t I?” His voice was practically a snarl, and Dorian’s watching him with the same interest that Ethan remembers from the rat massacre. “Do you remember, perchance, what I said to you about my past?”

To her credit, Brona doesn’t feign ignorance. “Such sins at your back, you claimed. What, a little whoring? Some girl left with child at the wayside? Perhaps a few dead at the end of that shiny gun of yours?”

The bitterness in her voice cuts through the room like a scythe, and Dorian’s hand flutters away from her waist. This Brona is not something to be adored, but feared. Ethan almost likes her, but for the painful echoes of who she was.

Ethan steps closer, even as Dorian retreats. A snarl is in his throat, and his mouth curls back into a smile that the darkness lurking within knows is a threat. “I was lost without you. Did you, by chance, happen to go to Putney’s Waxworks?”

“Mr. Gray accompanied me there.” A flicker is in her eyes, a sharpness in the tightening around her mouth. She understands. 

“I haven’t gone back since then,” Ethan says, quietly. “Trust me, Brona, when I say you aren’t made for such things.”

Dorian’s looking between them, looking lost for the first time. “Putney’s? Do you deal with grave robbers, Mr. Chandler?”

“The Mariner’s Inn,” Brona says, turning to Dorian. “It’s where we lived, did you know?”

“Got out just in time,” Dorian says, but pensively. “Didn’t you?”

“Brona died before the killings,” Ethan says calmly. “She was never in danger.”

Brona says, “You were never afraid to kiss me. Not even when I was spittin’ blood and hacking up bloody bits of me lungs.”

“I never had anything to fear from you, darling,” Ethan tells her truthfully. He doesn’t know, truly, if he’s incapable of catching diseases, but so far he’s been mighty lucky. There’s not even a scar where Roper stabbed him, and he might wake up brittle and sore after every full moon, but never truly wounded.

Dorian’s watching him carefully, and he says slowly, “My dear, are you implying that our Mr. Chandler was responsible for that… misdeed?”

“He’s the one doing the implying,” Brona says. There’s something new in her, now, in the way that she looks at him.

Like she might try to recruit him to her cause. Ethan hopes she doesn’t; he’s fought tooth and nail his entire life, and he won’t succumb easily, not even to the face of someone he once loved. Not when he wakes up so often remembering silence falling in a New Mexico village, the feel of blood caked under his nails, the scent of blood and viscera in the Inn.

He thinks of Vanessa, thinks of the battles they’re preparing for, and knows he can’t let Brona become a true monster. Not when she could _help_ , not when she can still be saved. 

“You don’t need to do this,” he says. “You can be angry at the world without needing to destroy it.”

Dorian has circled around to Ethan, touches his arm lightly. “But it’s so much more entertaining.”

Ethan ignores him, keeps his gaze level on Brona. “Think about it.”

He turns to leave. Dorian reaches out, grazes his sleeve as though he might grab it, but Ethan doesn’t stop. He doesn’t look behind him as he leaves Dorian’s townhouse.


End file.
